The Village protects its own

Chuck Todd's suggestion during last night's press conference that President Obama should ask the public to “sacrifice” -- as though lost jobs, health care and houses aren't enough -- drew immediate and widespread criticism online. And not just from progressives. At National Review's “The Corner,” Ramesh Ponnuru implicitly criticized the question, noting that Obama “made a reasonable point about the way the economy is already forcing people to make sacrifices.” Todd's question drew rapid criticism on Twitter, too.

Now, we know that the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz regularly reads National Review -- he quotes its content frequently. And we know he's an obsessive Twitter-user, and was Tweeting during last night's presser. So it's a little odd that his article about the press conference doesn't mention Todd's “sacrifice” question at all. It was perhaps the worst -- certainly the most widely-criticized -- question asked, and yet the nation's most prominent media critic didn't even mention it.

In fact, if you didn't know anything about the press conference other than what you read in Howard Kurtz's article, you'd think Todd simply asked whether those who were “irresponsible” should be helped by Obama's policies. Here's how Kurtz described Todd's question:

NBC's Chuck Todd said that “some of your programs, whether for Main Street or Wall Street, have actually cushioned the blow for those that were irresponsible.”

And here's the part of Todd's question Kurtz left out: “Why haven't you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?”

Also missing from Kurtz's article: the word “deficit.” That's more than a little surprising, given that the journalists who questioned Obama last night were bizarrely fixated on the topic.